


The Exquisite Drabble

by whal3rs (greyscaleminions)



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Drabble, Ficlet Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-21 20:44:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2481782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyscaleminions/pseuds/whal3rs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of shorter Dishonored ficlets, containing canon characters and some OCs, born of my errant mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Daud, Corvo, T

_He has ran from this for years. He has been running and hiding and lighting the city on fire and it is time for it to_ stop.

“Killed my Empress. Took her daughter.”

His eyes see empty lenses telescoping on his own, all wire teeth and gaping jaws, fearsome sleek metal, shiny with rain and blood, and somewhere underneath it is a human being just like him.

“Yes,” Daud rasps, and Corvo replies by grabbing him by the collar and lifting him to his knees. His razor-sharp blade is suddenly against his throat, warm with blood not his, and the mask is _right there_ and he hears a thrumming, distant, far away, a woman’s voice mumbling about secrets and fear and death.

_Time for it to_ stop.

“Why did you do it?” Corvo’s voice is high and shivering, and completely betrays the fear his mask instills. The beating grows in speed and intensity and Daud can hear gears shrieking and whispers turning to screams far away, like the sound is underwater.

“Money,” Daud hisses.

“I know Burrows paid you for it,” Corvo snaps, “Don’t condescend to me. Why? Tell me.”

“Why would anyone kill an Empress? I was selfish. It’s business. Burrows paid a pretty penny.” Daud stumbles over answers, and it occurs to him that he has _no idea_ why he did take the job.

“You _murdered_ her right in front of her daughter, don’t you _dare_ call that business.”

“Nobody should be at fault for this. Any of this,” Daud coughs at Corvo’s hand against his throat. “The plague. Burrows. Any of it.”

“You sound like you _want_ me to kill you,” Corvo squeaks, voice weak. “And you deserve it.”

_Yes_ , comes the voice again, _this needs to happen, he wears only death on his face, he lives only for death, he is worth nothing more than death._

“Then do it. Avenge your Empress. Kill me. Fix everything.”

“Revenge won’t solve anything.”

“Exactly.”

“This is your fucking fault,” Corvo says, voice rising in pitch and volume. “You killed her mother and ruined this city and destroyed my whole life and if I killed you to avenge this city it wouldn’t be enough! It wouldn’t be enough for her, just to kill you.”

Daud swallows deeply, eyes flickering, grateful for Corvo’s mask. He’s not sure he wants to see the face of this man while he cracks and crumbles and falls apart inches before his own face.

Rubble falls from the roof of the building as a raven kicks off and takes flight. Corvo leans in closely to him, and behind the mask his eyes are the same dark color of Daud’s, and he hisses:

“But it would be enough for _me_.”

Daud’s blood blossoms along his throat, and splatters against Corvo’s mask and hood. Corvo throws him against the weak, waterlogged wall of the collapsed building hard enough for Daud to fall right through.

Corvo’s eyes are on Daud while he strikes the rock wall, slides off and falls further, silent. Daud’s eyes are on the statue of the Empress. Daud is laughing, faintly, already gone, already far away.


	2. Daud, G

_This is what I have to give you. The rest is up to you. I only ask that you continue being yourself._

Daud flexes his forearm, rolling up the pinstriped shirt he wears, his hand still shivering underneath the mark, which is suddenly frigid again, blossoming in his skin, raised around it, an old scar already, and oscillating between white-hot and icy on his hand.

_Give it a try, lovely. See what you can do._

His fist tentatively releasing, mark rippling with light, Daud looks at a sandy beach of Serkonos, ten or twenty meters away, the blue of the Void beneath it. The sand is displaced from the ground, rippling off and out, salting the air. Daud looks at the palm tree growing from it and thinks _there_ , and he slips there in between the seconds, coming to a skidding halt and he’s home again, sand in his eyes, and when the world rights itself he finds himself in the Void again, the black-eyed Outsider bobbing in midair next to him.

_Exceptional. That will certainly come in handy for you. How do you feel?_

The mark is smoking again, and a pulsing in the back of his head makes Daud’s vision double, then triple as he uses the same power to reach the top of a Dunwall building displaced from the ground. His stomach rolls once, then settles, and the pulsing in his head grows to throbbing.

_Don’t wear yourself out, love._

The Outsider appears before him, playfully twirling his hands in midair, making walls rise around Daud, who responds with a snarl, imagining his way back to the beach. Opening his eyes, he finds himself upside down, falling into the Void, and he thinks again, _‘don’t let me wake up’_.

He awakens in the same closet he fell asleep in, curled in a patchwork quilt, somewhere off of the Old Port District, a snarling pain clawing out of his ears. He lifts his left hand out of the blanket, clenching his fist, and a mouse across the room squeals and dies.


	3. Corvo, Sokolov, G

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was intrigued by how Corvo doesn't have much personality, and how he functions entirely based upon others. I felt like Corvo coming to terms with his one-ness and his own persona would be interesting, so out came this mess.

“Hold still, Corvo. Void, can’t you stay still?”

“I’ve hidden in your dumbwaiter for an hour, Anton. I know how to stand still.”

“Ugh, _must_ you continue to mention those unsavory events?” Sokolov turned to the mostly blank canvas, deep shades of rich blue and gold in the background, and a vague indication of where the subject would sit.

“Fine, whatever you say,” Corvo mumbles and cracks his knuckles one-handed. “I don’t understand why you want to paint me so badly.”

“There is something about your visage that is intriguing, Lord Protector. I am _trying_ to capture it, if you would stop fussing.” Sokolov draws a long swath of deep blue where the curve of Corvo’s waist is, trails down to the coat’s flaring at his shins. “Do you own many of those coats, or do you just wear the one?”

“I’ve needed it to be replaced occasionally,” Corvo says, in his soft alto voice. “Otherwise, it’s durable enough.”

“It’s not the durability I’m afraid of, Lord Corvo,” Sokolov drawls as he paints the intricate fastenings of the long coat. “It is the _smell_.”

“I’m afforded the luxury of clean clothing, Sokolov,” Corvo replies, stumbling over his words, “Would that you could say the same.”

“ _Feh._ Move your hand.”

“Which one?”

“The one without – without the brand. Your tattoo. Whatever it is you call it.”

“Oh. The mark.” Corvo looks down at his left hand pensively, flexing his forearm and feeling the mark _wink_ with light. He swears he can hear the Outsider chuckling in the back of his head, a good-natured laugh.

“Yes, that one,” Sokolov muses, “As a matter of fact, would you put it atop the other? I think I’d like it to shine a bit.”

“You asked to paint _me_ , Anton. Not my tattoo.” Corvo is used to becoming nothing _but_ the mark and a mask, a means to an end. An arrow to be pointed. He doesn’t even mind it. But this painting…this isn’t about the Outsider. It’s not even about the nobility.

“Yes, yes, of course. I apologize,” Sokolov shakes his head and continues to paint the dark shades of Corvo’s skin, the black laces of his hair, recently cut since the reinstatement of the throne.

They sit like this for a long time. Later, when Corvo’s shed the coat and headed to bed, a servant knocks upon his door. Opening the door, the woman hands him a heavy portrait. Corvo mumbles a _thank you_.

It does not look like death. It does not look like his mask or his mark.

It looks like _himself_.

He is unused to being a person his own, unused to being viewed in the spotlight. The way he looks towards the viewer, the way he sits straight but not too straight, all seems too much like a human being.

He puts it underneath the bed, and pulls it out four times in the night to truly _see_ it. The title on the back reads “ _The Southern Raven and His Clean Hands_ ”.

Hands. Two. One unmarked, the other marked. Held atop. Each other. Whole. He leaves the light on.


	4. Daud, The Outsider, T

He emerges from the Market District with his pouch full of coin and his dagger embalmed with high born blood. The guards are still looking for him, the ones who saw him _blink_ away still standing agape and confused. It is minutes before they return shouting about _witchcraft_ and _The Outsider himself_. By then, he is far away. Almost near the gate to Slaughterhouse Row, he nervously scampers along rooftops. The little _forward_ movement the Outsider gave him is jittery and strange, and he overshoots a lot, skinning his knees on the shingles of rooftop.

_The guards will write their report tonight._ It’s him again. _Some of them will be fired. They will write that you ran for two blocks, and vanished in a cloud when they cornered you. They still do not believe it themselves._

Daud clenches his teeth through the aching in his ankles and half-drops, half-falls down an alley he barely saw coming. He hits the ground, splattering the walls with mud, ankle-deep in a dark puddle of river scum. He lifts himself out of the water and falls on top of a dirty, discarded mattress, his left hand on fire, his vest torn at the edges.

_I admire your finesse. You went through the place nearly invisible. I’m interested in your decision to silence him. Clean job you did of it, too. Nobody will miss him, I’m sure. The money, they might. He was due to go anyway, don’t you think?_

Daud wipes the blood from his dagger off on his trousers, out of breath all of a sudden. From the outskirts of the district, he can still hear the commotion he caused. An overturned barrel of freshly-caught hagfish. A couple knocked over in his escape. A middle aged noble cut down and lying on his doorstep, cheeks still rosy. Daud drove his knife through his jugular vein, in, out, and vanished before the kicking feet and shaking hands lost their animation.

_They don’t know who you are, but they will. The whole city will. They will whisper your name in alleys, they will revere and fear you equally. You will change everything this city means, Daud. You lovely, lovely boy._

A chill breeze shapes itself into fingers, and they brush Daud’s cheek gently. It’s disgusting, violent, and almost _sensual_. Daud breaths in harshly and shrinks away from the sensation, looking at the thin air to his left. He catches himself imagining a pale young man with inky eyes and coils of smoke to his back.

_Don’t be shy, lovely. Just keep doing what you’re doing._

That night, he sleeps curled in itchy blankets, on the rooftops, not afraid to fall.


	5. Daud, Corvo, G

It’s five years after the day Corvo woke up in the Flooded District that he gets a letter, delivered from Cullero, Serkonos, stamped two weeks ago.

The package contains three bone charms, one bottle of aged Serkonan wine, a small pouch of salt and spice, and a letter written on yellowed parchment, folded and folded again, with words scratched out and violent, scribbly handwriting. It bears the appearance of a letter that has been drafted – probably by someone who’s never been forced to write a true letter in the past.

A courier delivered it to him at suppertime, and now, at about 9 in the evening, Corvo has shed his heavy wool coat and vest, and blinked away from the prying eyes of servants and Emily, atop the tower. His hands shudder as he pulls the letter from his pocket and manipulates it into an opened position. The wine was given to the kitchen staff, the spices he kept for himself, and the bone charms are latched to his belt, humming distantly.

The letter talks of small things. Corvo thinks that it was meant to be pages long, but eventually was cropped and trimmed by a man who chooses his words very carefully, and very sparingly, to a miniscule passage.

_Lord Protector,_

_Serkonos is just as lovely as we may remember it, Corvo. It’s hot, horrifyingly so when compared to the damp cold of Gristol, but of all our vast arrays of nightmares, this is one we can choose for ourselves._

_I don’t expect you to drop everything and come here, but I will tell you this. Us, the mark we bear. It will happen again. It will keep happening. Granny Rags, Delilah Copperspoon, Corvo Attano. There will be repeats throughout the ages. But it doesn’t always have to end with loss. You and I both know the feeling of murder too well, but there is a new day rising. We are not things. You and I, we can go back to how it used to be. We do not have to be tortured and twisted and changed._

_I know that you will never leave the side of the Empress again. I respect that. My mother always told me to stand by the things we had fought for. But, for what it’s worth, do not become only your mark, only your blade, only your skull mask, only the alloy you use so well. Choose a new nightmare, a new mark, for yourself._

_See you if I see you._

_Daud_

When Corvo turns the page he finds drawings of hands, tiny charcoal sketches, deep swaths of grey and black. A woman’s hand, devoid of darkness, of pitch-black brands. A blue ink drawing of a too-large hand, nails bitten down and bloody, empty in the center, so empty.

Corvo folds the letter again, tucks it into his pocket. He examines his hands. Steady, so steady, so finely scarred. _It would take weeks_ , he would write to the ex-killer, _to map out every scar on me_. He finds the curves of the mark and follows them around the tendons, bones, and veins.

He looks to the sky, now, eastward, and finds the birds arcing again, courting, the parabola coming ‘round, looks through the cold, and weeps.


End file.
